Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Yes, we've gone there. I'm posting photos of me with my shirt off. I'm like a not-hot-male-version of Liz Hatch over here. I don't know how to feel about that. I'm pretty sure I know how you feel about it. OK, Shut up or the shorts come off next week.

If you're wondering why I'm looking less Selleck-ish than last week, that's because I suffer from a rare form of Sympathetic Chest Hair Loss. Whenever I shave my head, my chest hair tends to thin down to just about the same length, (which would be exactly 1/4"). There has got to be a cure for this anomalous, naturally occurring, man-scaping.

Due to scheduling changes at the Big Bikes I am now going to be writing all posts at night. If they don't get writ then, they ain't gettin' writ at all. Which makes this post kind of odd because I won't be weighing in until tomorrow AM. So what I have to do is make an assumption as to whether I've made zero progress toward my weight goal or actually gained weight. I'll do the weigh in tomorrow and plug the number into the stats above. We'll see how that goes.

Hey, I'm a bike racist, I'm a master of the preemptive excuse.

I have my reasons for thinking that I'm going to weigh in a little hefty tomorrow. In Matt Fitzgerald's book "Racing Weight," he talks about how athletes let down their dietary guard on weekends. Athletes do it, and I do too. I stayed on a decent plan this week. Generally my daily intake looked something like this:

That's not a whole lot of food mind you, but I'm not really on a crazy/sick riding regiment right now. Problem is the freakin' weekend. Friday was dinner at the sister's house, which always means overeating. It is a house of magnificent snacks and wonderful culinary delights. "Hmm, while I'm waiting for my healthy dinner dinner I'll just finish my nephew's meatball sub...and my niece's pepperoni pizza." Yes dinner was preceded by a brisk 5.5 mile run that looked something like this:

Oh, this is whole soy milk and tofu business. I was vegan for longer than M*A*S*H was on the air. I still can't see myself drinking "real" milk. Unless I could drink it straight from the udder and get it while it was still hot. That would be so yummy...and normal.

I had points to make about Fitzgerald's book today. Oh yes, the rest of my weekend cheating involved a bunch of beers at an engagement party Saturday night and some late night cheese-eating. And then there was ihop after our little ride Sunday followed by Thai take-out Sunday night. Not good if you want to be not-fat.

I did learn something from the book, I learned that an 8% weight gain is not only normal, but a good thing. For a guy of my stature that means a ten pound gain! I'm a little over 8% above weight though. Usually professional cyclists burn that ten pounds off during their first training camp.OK, when's my first training camp? 29er Crew boss man Travis Ott emailed me today to say that my new GEARED Superfly HT frame will be here next week. He must have forgotten to mention the training camp. What's that? Somewhere amongst all the gibberish I actually mentioned something you want to hear about? Tough shit skippy, we're going to talk more about my fatty-fatty-boom-boom.

But not much more, I swear.

Fitzgerald also talks about how Kenyan marathon runners (Please don't quote me on this. I don't get paid to do this and I can't be bothered to open the book back up to confirm the crap that is coming out of my fingers here.) and how they can't possibly eat enough when they're in their peak training phase. I think he said they burn like 172,000 calories a day and they just walk into KFC and say "can I have a menu? Did I say 'a menu,' I meant THE MENU...the whole thing. Moses, pull the truck around." I take that back. That's pretty much verbatim from the book. Amazing.

Matty does say that when cyclists are training 20 hours per week, like Kenyan marathon runners, they have trouble keeping up with their body's caloric intake requirements. With how hopeless I've proven to be at sticking to the plan here, that might be my only route — 20 hours per week.

Unless, unless, hear me out...Fitzgerald also talks about "sending messages to your body" a whole lot. Like if you starve yourself, your body gets the message that your metabolism should slow down and hold onto more calories. Well I'm going to try sending my body a message that says, "Bacon and beer are good for you...gooood for you. You got it? Now cut it out with this turning them into man boobs and man-handles (that's what we called them in prison) crap OK?"

I think I have cut back on my food intake through this winter. I haven't weighed myself in weeks. In the end, I never really pay attention unless I'm a week or two away from a stage race or 100miler. Then I pay attention. Does that make sense? Probably not but I sure am not counting.

I have no direct experience with the Race X Lite flat. My only issues with it relate to personal preference, i.e: it doesn't have enough sweep (I like 12°)and it's a bit narrow (I'm only seeing the 620mm on the site, don't know if you know something I don't).

Having toured the carbon testing facility in Waterloo and having seen first hand the rigors they put that stuff through, I have the utmost confidence in Bontrager carbon stuff.

The jury's still out. It is helping me, but I'm pretty sure I could have figured out the tactics I've applied without it. It's serving a purpose in the sense that it's making me think a little more about what I'm doing food-wise. There is a lot of talking in circles around valid points...but then again, who's going to buy a three page book of graphs and charts?

About Big Bikes

I am a Blogger/Writer/Video-hack guy for hire. I write product reviews and other weirdness for BikeRumor. I cover races and do interviews for Cyclingdirt. I come over here to talk weird and curse a lot.